frown darkened. Jess needed to get a hold on her life.
‘All on your own, with soil and flowerpots and roots and muck?’
‘Compost. And that’s for outdoor work, you don’t bring it in the greenhouse. I like peace and quiet.’
‘Jess. I wish you’d get out of there.’
‘I’m all right where I am.’
Lizzie tried to muster enough energy to renew her campaign for brightening Jess’s life, but she felt too tired tonight. It had been a long day with a baby of twenty months. He was asleep now, pink and fragrant from his bath, and the delicious thought of him suddenly blotted out her concern for Jess.
As they talked, exchanging the small news of the day, Lizzie heard the sound of her husband’s key in the lock. When James came in she looked up, beaming, and mimed a lingering kiss. She mouthed ‘Jess’ in answer to his silent question, and James retreated. Lizzie knew that he was tiptoeing upstairs to lean over the cot and marvel at his baby son.
Lizzie was thinking, as she did a dozen times a day, that she couldn’t quite believe in so much happiness. Now aged thirty-nine, within the last two and a half years, she had at last met the right man, married him, and had a baby. And just at the time when all this was happening, Jess’s twenty-three-year-old marriage to Ian was acrimoniously ending.
‘If you say so. I can’t help thinking, you know.’
‘Liz. I know what you want. You want me to be happy and with someone and doing and feeling the same things as you. But our lives have always been completely different, why should they start to be the same now?’
‘I don’t want you to be alone.’
This was the dark spot in Lizzie’s brand-new, pin-bright happiness. If only Jess were not lonely. If only something would happen to her that would comfortably reflect Lizzie’s own good fortune. A spring of maternal tenderness had been tapped in Liz by the birth of her child, and the overflow of it washed around Jess.
‘Well, I’m not alone, am I? I’m lucky.’
Lizzie gathered her hair in one hand and artfully twisted it off her face, stretching her neck and posing as if for the camera.
‘Darling, you can’t live your life through him, it’s not healthy for either of you.’
Jess said evenly, so that they both recognised it as a warning-off, ‘I don’t live through him, or anyone else. I’ve been a wife and a mother for twenty-three years. Now I want to be just what I am.’
There was a moment’s awkward silence.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lizzie said.
Jess smiled into the mouthpiece. ‘For what? For being yourself?’ Briefly she became the comforter again; the balance between them tipped so easily. ‘How’s Sock? What’s he doing?’
Christened Thomas Alexander, Lizzie’s baby had been referred to in the womb as Socrates and was now invariably known as Sock.
Lizzie’s voice lightened. ‘Asleep at last, thank God. He’s been tireless today, a chaos machine.’
Sock was a source of delight to everyone. For Jess the sight and smell and feel of him, the round head and peachy fuzz of skin, brought back piercingly sharp memories of her own babies. She turned her head to look at their photographs, framed on the shelf beside her chair. To see Sock was almost to have them back again.
‘He’s learnt so many new words.’
‘What does he say?’
They could talk endlessly about his achievements. There were no complications in this.
‘James is looking after him for the whole day tomorrow. I’m going to London to do the handcream voice-over. I’m swimming in free handouts of the stuff here, do you want some?’
‘Handcream? Yes, can you take it intravenously?’
‘Probably. I just hope they don’t expect me to say so in thirty seconds. Darling, I’ve got to go.’
James reappeared, changed out of his business clothes into a sweater and corduroys. He made a little tilting movement with his fingers, asking if she wanted a drink. Lizzie mouthed, ‘God, yes.’
‘Right. Hope the voice-over goes well. Call me soon.’
‘Tomorrow night, or the day after. Promise you’re all right?’
‘Everything is fine here.’
‘Good night darling.’
James came to her as she put down the phone and slid his hands down to her hips, then kissed her thoroughly.
‘Mmm. At last. How are you, my darling?’
She curled an arm around his neck. ‘Feeling pretty fat and mumsy, actually.’
‘You look wonderful. You feel wonderful.’
‘Oh. Ah. Jim, what did my life consist of before there was you?’
Jess went slowly upstairs to the bathroom and tipped a heap of soiled clothes out of a basket. She stooped to sort them into differentiated piles and carried an armful down to the kitchen. She fed the bundle into the washing machine and slammed the round eye of the door, and while the clothes turned in the lace of suds she found a tin of soup in the cupboard and heated it up. She carried the bowl through into the living room and watched the television news as she ate.
The club was packed. It was a popular DJ night and there were surges of dancers filling the floor. In the mass of people Rob could see Danny dancing with Cat. He was smiling broadly and bouncing on the spot, up and down fast from the knees, as if he was on springs. One hand held a bottle by the neck and the other waved in the air over his head. The four girls and Rob and Danny had all had a lot to drink, the celebration of Zoe’s birthday moving on from the café to gather swift momentum in another pub and then the club. The beginning of the day seemed very long ago to Rob, at the far end of a multicoloured narrow tunnel. The music was loud, seeming to generate itself within his head. He followed the intricate cross-patterning of it in his mind, letting his eyes drift shut, then opening them again to see Cat standing in front of him. She was very pretty, he noticed for the first time. A little triangular face, just like a cat’s, with a damp fringe of hair sticking to her forehead. Smoky eyes. He knew from dancing with her that she was thin and light-boned. Catty-like. He swayed towards her with music booming in his head. She was saying something to him.
‘What?’
She repeated it, shouting with her mouth to his ear. Warm breath on his face. ‘Where’s Rachel?’
Rachel. Yes, the plain one of the foursome. She had been here a minute or perhaps an hour ago. He shrugged his shoulders against the waves of sound and Cat pushed away from him. Danny was at the bar now and Rob joined him. Another beer apiece, and when Danny tilted the bottle to his mouth a trail of silvery froth ran down his chin and glittered in the blue and purple lights. He wiped it away and moved his head to draw Rob closer. They stumbled together, Rob’s arm round Dan’s shoulders, a support for both
